Norat Ter-Grigoryants

Norat Grigoryevich Ter-Grigoryants (born 16 July 1936) is a general of Armenia who was formerly a Lieutenant-General of the Soviet Union. He fought as commander of the Soviet 40th Army in the Soviet-Afghan War, and later commanded troops in the Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Biography
Norat Ter-Grigoryants was born in Vladikavkaz in the Russian SFSR to a family of Armenians that fled from Erzurum Province and Kars to the Soviet Union in the 1920s to flee the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian Genocide.

In 1955, Ter-Grigoryants entered the Soviet Army as a conscript and served as Chief-of-Staff of the Soviet 40th Army from 1982 to 1983 during the Soviet-Afghan War. In late 1983 he became Deputy Chief of the Main Staff of the USSR Ground Forces and remained deputy chief as a Lieutenant-General until the fall of the USSR in 1991.

From 1992 to 1995, Ter-Grigoryants served in the Armenian Army, fighting for his ethnicity against the army of Azerbaijan. He developed the Armenian Army and Armenian Air Force, styling Armenia's armed forces to be akin to Russia. Thanks to his efforts, Armenia won the Nagorno-Karabakh War against Azerbaijan, and he retired a year after the war's end. Since 1995 he lives in Russia, but maintains his ties to Armenia.